There is a mini-Reformation going on in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 2009, documentary film-maker Andrew Tait followed the Stoltzfus family – Ephraim, Amanda and their children – as they began to question aspects of their Amish faith. Two years on, they turn out to have been something of a Lollardian vanguard. Last night's sequel, Leaving Amish Paradise (BBC2), looked at Ephraim's first forays into the world and those of the increasing numbers of the sect who are joining the Charity Church, which promulgates the notion that they should all be allowed to read the Bible in English, not kept reliant on the elders' interpretations of the Old German version the Amish recognise; and allows them to trade in their buggies for something more diesel-based in which to go forth and experience something of the modern world.

It took a certain amount of mental work to warm to Ephraim, who had decided to devote himself full-time to preaching and trust in the Lord rather than a search for paid employment to provide for him and his family. You had to take it on faith that this was an act of faith rather than the Amish version of massive self-indulgence and revelling in a new-found freedom. He made it through the summer selling fruit and vegetables and working the land in return for a rent-free farmhouse, but by winter the Lord (and the cash-supplying members of his new church) had said "Enough" and he started taking on building work instead.

Meanwhile, another couple – Jessy and Elsie – and their children had decided to follow suit. They drove off to start a new life while the community they had grown up with met to excommunicate them. They met initially with a cold shoulder from Ephraim too, who felt that they should have gone to the Amish meeting to proclaim their new faith, as he had done, rather than "run away". Pettiness or cleaving to a rigorous moral code? Impossible to say and Tait didn't try. It was one of the many quietly revealing moments in this elegiac, faintly melancholic film that encompassed the good and bad to be found in the Amish way of life and in the changes that are surely coming.

From faint melancholy to desperate sadness . . . Kidult: Marathon Boy (BBC4) was a film five years in the making by Gemma Atwal, who charted the strange story of Budhia Singh, the child feted in India for his marathon (literally) feats of endurance. Born in the slums of Bhubaneswar, he had run his sixth half marathon by the time we met him, at the age of three, under the guidance of his adoptive father and coach Biranchi Das.

To western eyes, their relationship was questionable from the beginning. Can it be right to demand so much of such a young child, however great his talent appears and however wretched a life (sold by his poverty-stricken mother to a pedlar who beat him) he had led before? The boy's eyes were always glazed, by exhaustion after running but also, more troublingly, in between. There was no exhilaration in him when he finished a race. You got the feeling he was forever running away from everything, never towards something. Das stretched and massaged his tiny protege before a race in a manner that was halfway between a caress and a tenderising of a nice piece of meat – from a cash cow, perhaps.

The authorities had their suspicions and began to ban Budhia from entering races. From there, things deteriorated into a welter of accusations. A trust fund had been set up to pay for Budhia's (or Das's) Olympic ambitions. Das was accused of embezzlement by child welfare officials. They produced no evidence to back up the charges. Then Budhia's biological mother took back her son – to protect him from abuse by Das, she claimed; because he had refused to build her a house using the money she thought he had earned from the boy, responded Das. Budhia, still only seven, said Das had blown chilli powder in his face and hung him from a ceiling fan, but it seemed like he was parroting someone else's lines.

The arguments became moot when Das was shot dead outside the orphanage he ran with his wife. Afterwards, Budhia was awarded a scholarship to a private school, living in a government hostel during the week and joining his mother in the slum at the weekend. "He [Das] never beat me. He never beat anyone. He used to love us all. I miss him now while I'm running." A sad film that rightly offered no definitive conclusions. But perhaps by the end, as we saw Budhia playing a game of tag at school, the eyes looked a little more alive as he ran towards his friends.